EVER SINCE the first “Tea Party” convention was held last month in
Nashville, Tennessee, with Sarah Palin as one of the keynote speakers,
America’s political and media establishments have been reacting with a
combination of apprehension and disdain.

The Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, has
called the Tea Party adherents Nazis, while the mainstream media tend
to portray them as ignorant and provincial, a passive rabble with raw
emotion but little analytical skill, stirred up and manipulated by
demagogues to advance their own agendas.

To be sure, the Tea Party’s brand of aggrieved populism – and its
composition of mostly white, angry, middle-class voters – has deep
roots in the United States, flaring up during times of change. But
observers who have drawn comparisons to the Know-Nothings, the racist,
paranoid, anti-Catholic, and anti-immigrant party that surged in the
1850s, are reading the movement far too superficially.

Indeed, those who deride and dismiss this movement do so at their
peril. While some Tea Partiers may be racist or focused on eccentric
themes – such as the validity of Barack Obama’s birth certificate – far
more of them, those who were part of the original grass-roots effort,
are focused on issues that have merit.

If you actually listen to them, instead of just reading accounts
transmitted through the distorting mirror of the mainstream media, you
hear grievances that are profound, as well as some proposals that are
actually ahead of their time.

For example, Tea Party activists, using a group called End the Fed,
were among the first to focus critical attention on the unelected and
unaccountable US Federal Reserve Board. Now legislation is being put
forward to establish greater transparency at the Fed – surely a
laudable outcome.

While those attracted to the Tea Party movement are a diverse group,
some common themes emerge. They see a struggle for the soul of the Tea
Party between true libertarians, who are worried about individual
liberties, and traditional conservatives.

Many who spoke to me directly in my Facebook community believe that
Congress is utterly broken and regard faith in either of America’s
major parties as naïve. They view the Democrats and the Republicans
alike as obstacles to change, drowning out the voices of the people as
they kowtow to special interests. They are concerned about concentrated
Federal control, spiraling debt, and the loss of individual rights.

Are they really wrong? After all, the movement took shape following
the US government’s massive – and bipartisan – bailout of Wall Street
banks. And, at a time when the Chinese government, America’s main
creditor, has begun sending clear signals about its preferences for US
domestic policy – even as it ignores American criticism of its human
rights record – are the Tea Partiers merely being paranoid?

As little as I like Sarah Palin, the fact is that entrenched
lobbying and other special interests mean that a “changing of the
guard” in Washington is too often only a change in branding. As Barack
Obama submits to the pressures of a US Department of Defence in which
private contractors comprise 65 per cent of the staffing budget,
proposes preventive detention of Guantánamo detainees, and perpetuates
the status quo in myriad other ways, her question – “So how’s that
whole hopey-changey thing workin’ out for ya?” – is not the wrong
question.

Indeed, for nearly a decade, concentration of executive power has
threatened America’s system of checks and balances and given the
Federal government the authority to spy on citizens, withhold
information, and aggressively arrest and even Taser protesters – or to
hire private contractors to do so.

In these circumstances, the Tea Party activists’ focus on supporting
states’ autonomy – and even on property rights and the right to bear
arms – can seem like a prescient effort to constrain overweening
corporate and military power in national government.

That is why the elites in general are so quick to ridicule this
movement. A movement that is genuinely populist in origin poses a
threat to their own position in the power structure. For once, a
grassroots movement has arisen that is composed of people – some with
Ivy League degrees, but many without – who are taking seriously the
internet-age promise that you don’t have to yield leadership to an
established class of politicians and pundits.

This is also why the Republicans are seeking to capture the Tea
Party movement’s energy for partisan purposes, overrunning it with
well-paid operatives, particularly from former Representative Dick
Armey’s fundraising and advocacy organization. Moreover, Tea Party
gatherings have increasingly become a platform for Republican
candidates seeking the support of a highly mobilised electoral base.

I hope that the Republican establishment does not succeed in
co-opting the Tea Party – and that the Democratic establishment does
not, either. And I hope that the movement captures the imagination of
progressives, who are equally disgusted with the corruption of the
status quo, and who can agree on many thematic goals, even if their
policy proposals might be different.

At its worst, any populist movement can descend to demagoguery. But
the Tea Party movement at its best (or in its origin) is
constitutionalist. That is an awakening – and long overdue – sentiment
in America, and one that spans the political divide.

The Tea Party movement’s adherents are angry – and, in many
respects, justifiably so – but most of them are not crazy. That
diagnosis better suits those who prefer to ignore them.

Establishment politics is using a standard tactic against the Tea Party movement: inject some charismatic people to take control of the conversation, find, isolate and excommunicate the loudest opposition voices, fill the resultant void and bring the confused masses back around to the status quo. The Democrats do this to homosexuals and civil libertarians constantly, the Republicans mastered it with the religious right and "paleoconservatives" decades ago. Let's hope the tea partiers have the sense to see through the charade. Right now it's not looking too hot, but I haven't given up on them.

Comment by Darren Wolfe

Entered on: 3/8/2010 5:56:09 PM

The libertarians better hurry & take charge of them. I was kicked out of Valley Forge Patriots - Tea Party Conservatives for advocating liberty.

Here's a good sampling of some of our debates:

http://www.meetup.com/VFP-TeaParty09/messages/8814395/

http://www.meetup.com/VFP-TeaParty09/messages/8812052/

http://www.meetup.com/VFP-TeaParty09/messages/8812152/

http://www.meetup.com/VFP-TeaParty09/messages/8812165/

http://www.meetup.com/VFP-TeaParty09/messages/8751524/

http://www.meetup.com/VFP-TeaParty09/messages/8660373/

http://www.meetup.com/VFP-TeaParty09/messages/8654408/

http://www.meetup.com/VFP-TeaParty09/messages/8496851/

They also believed every goofy email that came down the pike. Here's
just one:

"When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great
things, shall
be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render
powerless the
checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal
and
oppressive as the government from which we separated."